Migrant labourer tests positive for COVID-19 in C'garh

Raipur, Apr 28 () A 58-year-old migrant labourertested positive for coronavirus in Chhattisgarh's Surajpurdistrict on Tuesday, taking the number of active cases in thestate to four, a health official said.

The state has reported 38 cases of COVID-19 so far, ofwhich 34 patients have been discharged after recovering fromthe infection.

The swab sample of a labourer, hailing from Garhwadistrict in the neighbouring state of Jharkhand, was sent fortesting to Pt Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Medical College inRaipur, Surajpur collector Deepak Soni told .

This is the first confirmed case of coronavirusdetected in the state's Surguja division, which consists offive districts.

The patient, who works as a labourer at Wardha inMaharashtra, had travelled to the border district ofRajnandgaon along with other labourers during the lockdownearly this month, the official said.

He was placed in a quarantine facility on the inter-state border, but in view of crowding at the facility, migrantworkers, most of them hailing from Jharkahand, were shifted tothe quarantine centre in Surajpur on April 17, he said.

"We collected random samples from people at thequarantine centre to check for the infection, following whichhis report came out positive," the collector said, adding thatthe patient was undergoing treatment at Ambikapur MedicalCollege in Surguja district.

Samples of people who had come in contact with thepatient will also be sent for testing, he added.

With this, the state has so far recorded 38 cases ofcoronavirus, of which 34 have been discharged followingrecovery and three, apart from the labourer, were undergoingtreatment at AIIMS Raipur, a health official said. TKPARU ARU